


Five Virtues

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: 5 Things, Community: fanfic100, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-17
Updated: 2006-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Arvin Sloane wishes he'd said to someone, but didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Virtues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



> The drabble titles are taken from the Confucian five virtues. Details here: <http://www.analects-ink.com/mission/Confucius_Five_Virtues.html>
> 
> fanfic100 Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane #86 - Choices. My table is [here](http://kangeiko.livejournal.com/113677.html).

**1\. Li**

She really did look charming when surprised. "What are you – what do you –"

"Drink your coffee, Dr Barnett," Arvin Sloane chided softly. He reached out and plucked the napkin from her hand, carefully arranging it by her coffee cup. The profiteroles sat fat and content in the centre of the dessert plate, oozing cream and looking mighty pleased with themselves. "People will stare."

"You _lied_?"

"Très gauche," Sloane said quietly, and whether it was the indignity of professing to high-spirited exaggeration, or the humiliation of having to rethink a strategy, but he could feel his face flush with heat.

_It's safer this way,_ Sloane thought, and, fast on its heels came, _Coward._

* * *

**2\. Zhi**

"Yes," Sloane said after a moment's hesitation. "She's lovely."

"But?"

_She's boring, and you know it. All you want is for me to say so, Jack. And then what?_ The 'then what' was obvious: Jack would go back to Laura, and they'd back up, and this little piece of fluff would be history. And Jack and Laura would eventually stop this make-up and break-up charade to become Jack&amp;Laura and Sloane –

Sloane would likely be best man for going through all this trouble.

All of a sudden, he wanted to wipe Jack's smug little smile off his face. "Nothing," he said with exaggerated care. "She's lovely, Jack. _Much_ better wife material than Laura."

* * *

 

**3\. Ren**

"I understand," he said. "I'm going to take care of it, personally." His desk drawer is open and inside a tattered photograph is clearly visible: a young man with curly hair is hoisting a little girl up into his arms.

Sloane picked up the phone. "Jack," he said. "Come to my office. "We have a problem with Sydney's fiancé."

From this angle, the little girl's smile is twisted slightly, as if she is dubious of her precarious position.

In his mind's eye, Sloane is already running through a list of possible safe houses.

 

* * *

 

**4\. Yi**

"I'm going to have to think on it," Sloane said after an exaggerated pause.

Smithson looked at him with honest surprise. "Arvin – this isn't an open offer. You're in, or you're out, and I need to know _now_. The Alliance can't afford you any leeway, especially at this early stage."

"Ah," Sloane said. "Then I'm afraid that it's going to be no."

"No?"

"No," Sloane confirmed and, after a moment's thought, shot the smug, self-glorying SOB in the head.

"That was needlessly abrupt," Jack lectured later. "He could have provided us with useful information."

"I doubt it."

"Did he say anything about what organisation he was representing?"

The sudden urge to lie rose through Sloane for no reason at all.

"Arvin?"

"Yeah," he said, finally; a drowning man gasping for air. "He talked about the Alliance."

* * *

 

**5\. Xin**

"Emily," Arvin Sloane says one morning. "I love you." The room is oddly warm, given the chill that Arvin feels. He pulls the sheet tighter around his body and watches the light filter into the room. Once, when he had been very young and foolish, he promised her that every morning he woke up in their bed he would tell her he loves her. And Arvin Sloane is a man of his word.

"Emily," he says again, and the words die in his throat. With cold fingers he traces the soft cotton of Emily's pillow and wonders why the fabric still retains her scent.

"I love you," he says, and she has been dead three days, and counting.

*

fin


End file.
